Archive for the ‘Raid’ Category

The other night is I ran a few non-Heroic dungeons with the guild (it was four lvl 85s and a lvl 84). It was all my buds, and we were on vent so that was fun too. Above you can see the lot of us in Stonecore.

Oh no, it’s High Priestess Azil! Whatever will we do??

Kick her ass, of course. The non-Heroic Stonecore was a breeze.

After a protracted process of getting our lvl 84 a high enough item level in Stormwind we headed to Halls of Origination. Having never been here, I was at a slight disadvantage.

Thankfully vent makes everything easier. It’s so much easier to coordinate over voice then typing everything in the head of the action. The bosses were explained, we blitzed the place, and finally came to the final boss.

He fell with little effort. I learned that, vice Heroics, normal dungeons can be burned through by the tank-and-spank method allot. We rarely had to deviate from that other then to dodge the occasional AOE or floor attack. I wonder what Heroic would be like?

We spent about 15-30 minutes in Stormwind after that just chatting about gear, future dungeons, and how to maximize what we’ve got. One of my buds in the guild pointed me to the Belt of the Ferocious Wolf since I was exalted with the Defenders of Hyjal. He then crafted me an ebonsteel belt buckle for it. That was really nice of ‘im. Thanks dude.

Actually after one of the bosses in Halls, his weapon broke. Of all the things to have happen! It finally allowed me to use Jeeves in a group, who I got while in Ulduar with the same guy. It took me some time to build him, but I was like a proud parent when I did. Yay for engineering!

Finally. It had been too long. Absence, as they say, can make the heart grow fonder. I had to do it.

I had to hit up Wintergrasp one last time.

I’ll likely never got back after Cataclysm launches on Tuesday so I wanted to go back and have one more great match. What I got started out abysmally slow, but ended up being perhaps my favorite match ever.

Blizzard now regulates the number of participants to create even matches, and at the start there were exactly four Alliance players, with me playing Raid Leader. We took everything that was able to be captured in the first five minutes, and then stood around and stared at each other. Finally we got organized and I led the most coordinated, communicative, and well-organized Wintergrasp defense I’d ever seen. Everyone was in touch, and we had all our bases covered, so to speak. Now, if only there was someone to fight.

I was running through the Broken Temple factory (seen above) when I noticed our control had gone down to 50%. A Draenei priest tipped me off that there was a hidden rogue near by. We smoked out the undead rogue and killed him. Finally some action! Not long after things picked up with an Orc hunter, a troll shaman, a blood elf mage, an Orc Death Knight and some others joining the fray. It was time to put out organization to the test. We pinged our foes on the mini map to keep tabs on them. I was once under assault by the death knight, hunter and mage all at once at the Broken Temple (where most of the action took place) when my allies rode to my rescue. I did the same later, bailing out our Draenei priest buddy who called for help since he was specced for healing.

At one point I caught a troll shaman in the open and began to attack her. It turned out she was a restoration-specced shammy.

Kudos to you, Sisstah – you were (to be blunt) a freaking pain in the ass to kill. My saving grace was having my Draenei priest buddy (God, I wish I knew his name, I think it was Judgeandjury but don’t quote me on that) along for the ride. He healed me some and kept her fire elemental busy while I finally laid the smack down. This was a long and tedious freaking fight. She didn’t do allot of damage but she’d keep healing her stupid ass. Finally, two-on-one was too much and she fell. My big ‘hoorah’ moment came when I tried to take a siege engine down to one of the towers.

This dumb, apparently suicidal Orc hunter kept attacking my ride! I tried to tell him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him that it was in his best interest to leave me in the tank – I was much more dangerous to him on foot. He ultimately broke my ride, at which point he and his crocolisk assailed me. I was down to 15% health so I bubbled, healed to 80% and proceeded to beat the ever loving tar out of him. Ha! Gav: 1, stupid-ass Orc: 0.

As I was flying about Northrend, running dailies, a guildie was getting achievement in Ulduar. I congratulated him, of course, which set off a chain reaction that was fun and educational. You see, he was trying to kill Ignis the Furnace Master for the weekly raid quest. As fate would have it, his 25-man raid had a DPS spot open, so I was invited. I was unsure about how much help I could be, but I joined in anyway.

This is about where I found everybody, right at Ignis’ doorstep. We got our act together and – after some random arguing over engineering loot – we set forth to slay the beast.

We did it, obviously, and I got an achievement, to boot. I thanked my guildie for inviting me, and then a weird thing happened. We got talking about my DPS and my gear, and he started lending me advice on how to improve them. I paid attention as best I could and he helped me set an upgrade path via emblems. I found out that for my first upgrade, I need 50 Emblems of Triumph, and – at that point – I had 12. I ran a string of heroics to try and get some more, and it was interesting to say the least.

First up was Azjol-Nerub, which progressed as one would expect a dungeon to go – steady and uneventful. The second one I ran was wild. A pair of players from the same guild were heading up the run and they were trying to break some kind of world speed record, it seemed. They were blitzing through mobs, gathering a ton in one place before turning to fight. This caught the rest of us off guard, but we kept up. Once Keristrasza was dead, I had was up to 27 total Emblems of Triumph, only 23 short of my goal. I queued up again, this time with the server due to go down for Tuesday maintenance in about half an hour. I ended up in Gundrak for the first time, and died on the first set of mobs. Our tank wasn’t very good, our healer had lag issues and our mage went AFK right at the start. We killed the first boss (with the healer and the mage dead), but then the server announced it was going down in 15 minutes. Soon, everybody began bailing and left me alone in the dungeon.

I ‘ported out and logged off as well, with 28 Emblems of Triumph, plus an achievement from the first Gundrak boss. Tonight I hope to get the lost 22 emblems for my new gear. Onwards and upwards!

I ran a quick random heroic tonight and ended up in the Hall of Stone. We cleared it pretty quick, but that was to be far from the last of the Ulduar area I’d see tonight.

A guildie reached out to see if any of us needed the weekly raid kill, Flame Leviathan Must Die!. I did, and he talked me in to going. We gathered a group of 10 and set forth.

I was invited to be a gunner, but by the time we got there, somehow that was lost in the discussion and I ended up on a motorcycle. I did pretty good and my bike never fell below 78% health, but it was a learning curve to start. For one, I had no idea what my bike’s powers did. Some screwing around finally taught me that my sonic horn did damage, and my ‘tar’ ability was like Gav’s consecration power. We rolled through the courtyards, and blasted the hell out of… something blue falling from the sky. Sorry, no idea what it was and no one had time to explain. Finally, the Flame Leviathan came out to play.

We killed him too, in short order. I kinda sucked, but I was never in danger, so that was nice. Oh, and I got an achievement for it to boot.

Now all this would be nice enough, but as an engineer I scavenged the Leviathan’s wreckage and came away with 18 saronite bars, 3 eternal shadows, 2 eternal fire, 5 overcharged capacitors, plus the schematics for Jeeves. Nice.

What happened was that I was in Wintergrasp this morning to try out a new prot PvP spec. I’d built it not long after getting my subscription started back up, and had spent about an hour practicing my spell rotations on the hapless wildlife in Storm Peaks. I got to Wintergrasp right after the queue started (15 minutes before the match), and stayed until the match began. When it did, I noticed this little icon near the top of my name, like a little crown. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I let it go. As the battle wound down, I got a faux achievement from my Wintertime plug in. I was curious, but didn’t have time to look it up at the moment. When we won Wintertime gave me another shamchievement. I congratulated the raid on the win, and came through in chat with the prefix [RL]. Raid leader? Oh, so that’s what the icon meant. The two notices from Wintertime were for leading a full raid and leading a defensive victory. Big deal.

I died five times early on (really out of practice), but was alive through the last half of the battle. I actually went the first 2/3rds of the fight before remembering to use my talentedHammer of Justice on the horde. Oops.

Well, I did nothing of note, and got the job via random dumb luck, but I can at least claim – in all honesty – to have lead a successful defense of Wintergrasp. I’ll just leave out the part about not knowing about it until the match was over.

I went with the guild to 10-man Naxxramas: Arachnid Quarter tonight. The first boss, Anub’Rekhan was a pushover with our teamwork. The second, though, Grand Widow Faerlina, was a pain in the butt. We wiped on her enrage the first time when we jumped the gun to cut her rage short, The second time we tried, we accidentally killed the adds way too quick and left her with 35% or so health, and no adds to kill to quell her rage. We did it, though. I ended up using my bubble and a Holy Light, but with our kick-ass DPS we dropped her. Maexxna was a breeze, as it couldn’t do much damage to us so we just wore him down. In the end I had an average of 2.4k DPS, thanks to our raid’s buffs, and I was putting out 3.19k DPS in the final battle, which allowed me to use Avenging Wrath twice. I also came away with some gear for my holy spec, since I was the only plate-wearer with a caster spec. I got the Chivalric Chestguard and the Frostblight Pauldrons. Nice! I had to leave before we got to the next quarter, though, which was frustrating. Oh well.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog has probably noticed a severe dichotomy in my posts the last couple of days. Four days ago, I ripped raiding and instances. Three days ago I went to my first Heroic dungeon with my guild. Two days ago I joined them in my first 10-man raid. What’s happened? I’ll elaborate.

My guild has been asking me for a while to join them for a while now. I enjoy going with them but I have this huge fear of letting everyone down. I also still hate hardcore raiders with a passion. The ‘do everything the hard way, up hill, both ways’ thought process irks me. It finally dawned on me this morning, though, that I’m kinda just being drug along by my guild. I don’t feel I’m truly pulling my own weight here. I think this leaves me with two options: stop running instances with the guild, or put in double time so I can hold my own. For now, I’m opting for the latter. We’ll see how it goes.

My guild asked for all eligible level 80s to help on 10-man Obsidian Sanctum, and since I qualified, I tagged along. My first trick was figuring out where OS was. Once I did that, we ran through two backup healers before opting for another DPS and my guild leader respeccing his alt for healing.

We did ok clearing the western half of the dungeon, but the start of the eastern half was shaky. We wiped on trash mobs when they ganged up on the main tank who promptly died, allowing the mobs to run amok amongst the rest of us. After that, we fought Vesperon, and I was part of the contingent chosen to go into the portals with the off-tank, along with the rest of the DPS and one of our healers. That fight was no big deal. Sartharion, though… that was a beast. I was warned to avoid the lava waves, to which I said, “what lava waves?” After it was explained, my guild leader on his restoration druid whispered to me to help with the healing to keep the tank alive. So, I was to pour on the damage and help keep the tank alive? *gulp*

As you can see, it all worked out. No one died, but I did get hit by one of the lava waves I was warned about. I was dying in a hurry, but Lay on Hands and Cleanse saved my hide. I then turned on my Fire Resistance Aura to help everyone cope. I kept one eye on everyone’s health bars and kept Sacred Shield on the main tank, firing off a Flash of Light when necessary. I got a few more Emblems of Heroism, but no loot. Oh well, maybe next time.

One last note: compared to my Heroic Violet Hold, I did much better, DPS-wise, ranking 2nd or 3rd, depending on whose recount you went by. My DPS in H VH was almost under 1k, but I nearly topped 2k in OS. Nice.

Other then getting to see my UI for once, this picture is an important part of Gav’s history: I played my first Wintergrasp match. Actually, I was debating whether I wanted to try my hand at it, dallying around the portal’s location as a raid formed, when I got an invite. I just kinda dove in, and the rest is history. Someone commented in raid chat that “level 75s will die quick,” and I offered to give up my spot, but was coerced into staying. I’m glad I did! I quickly died, as I was warned, but after that, I never went below 60% health, due to the awesome healers on our side. We won, and I got credit for 59 kills and earned 1369 honor points. Yes! Another note is that one of my guild’s leaders, Chunkeylover, was in the raid, and another guildie, Dradeth, was in my actual group.

Now, in all honesty, I think I may have had a hand in one or two kills, max. I’m just lucky that my allies picked up the slack! We won in under ten minutes, earning me an extra achievement. For my part, I tossed my hammer of wrath around, used my Judgement of Justice to slow the Horde down, and hit some folks with heals. I’m not sure if I was of any help at all, but I do know one thing: I’ll be back.

Hi, I’m Alphasim . I’ve been playing World of WarCraft for four years now and my main is a level 85 human paladin named Gavelier. Gav features prominently here at Alazar so you'll get to know him and his guild.

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